Armed man rammed vehicle into Michigan synagogue and was fatally shot by security, AP source says

WEST BLOOM­FIELD, Mich. (AP) — A man armed with a ri­fle rammed his ve­hi­cle in­to one of the na­tion’s largest re­form syn­a­gogues in a De­troit sub­urb and was fa­tal­ly shot by se­cu­ri­ty Thurs­day, The As­so­ci­at­ed Press has learned.

The ve­hi­cle caught fire af­ter crash­ing in­to Tem­ple Is­rael in West Bloom­field Town­ship, ac­cord­ing to a per­son fa­mil­iar with the mat­ter who spoke to The AP.

The at­tack­er drove through a set of doors and in­to a hall­way where some­thing in the ve­hi­cle ig­nit­ed, a sher­iff said.

“He was trav­el­ing with pur­pose down the hall, from my look at the video,” Oak­land Coun­ty Sher­iff Mike Bouchard said.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors were still work­ing to iden­ti­fy the man and a pos­si­ble mo­tive for the at­tack, said the per­son who could not pub­licly dis­cuss de­tails of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and spoke to AP on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty. The per­son cau­tioned that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was still in the ear­ly stages.

In the min­utes af­ter the at­tack, smoke bil­lowed from the syn­a­gogue, which al­so hous­es an ear­ly child­hood cen­ter.

“No kids or no staff were in­jured what­so­ev­er,” Bouchard said. He said one se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer was hit by the ve­hi­cle and knocked un­con­scious but did not suf­fer life-threat­en­ing in­juries.

The syn­a­gogue has mul­ti­ple se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers, he said, and at least one fired at the sus­pect.

“We can’t say what killed him at this point but se­cu­ri­ty did en­gage the sus­pect with gun­fire,” the sher­iff said, adding that it was pos­si­ble the at­tack­er killed him­self or died some oth­er way.

Syn­a­gogues around the world have been on edge and ramp­ing up se­cu­ri­ty since the U.S. and Is­rael launched a war with Iran with mis­sile strikes on Feb. 28.

The FBI has warned that Iran­ian op­er­a­tives may be plan­ning drone at­tacks on tar­gets in Cal­i­for­nia. Two men brought ex­plo­sives to a far-right protest out­side the New York may­oral man­sion on Sat­ur­day. In­ves­ti­ga­tors al­lege they were in­spired by the Is­lam­ic State ex­trem­ist group. An as­sailant drove a car in­to peo­ple out­side an Or­tho­dox syn­a­gogue in Man­ches­ter, Eng­land, on Yom Kip­pur, the holi­est day of the Jew­ish cal­en­dar. He stabbed two peo­ple to death be­fore of­fi­cers shot and killed him.

On Thurs­day, the Oak­land Coun­ty Sher­iff’s of­fice cleared the build­ing and about a dozen par­ents sprint­ed to get their chil­dren from an ear­ly child­hood learn­ing cen­ter in­side. West Bloom­field School Dis­trict went on lock­down.

Au­thor­i­ties were work­ing to re­unite par­ents with their chil­dren at a near­by Jew­ish Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­ter.

Samuel Ben­nett, whose wife was in the build­ing, said he was deeply re­lieved to learn she and oth­ers were OK. “I don’t even know what the words are,” he told WDIV-TV.

Oak­land Coun­ty is Michi­gan’s sec­ond-largest coun­ty with rough­ly 1.3 mil­lion peo­ple. The ma­jor­i­ty of De­troit-area Jew­ish res­i­dents live there.

Michi­gan Gov. Gretchen Whit­mer is­sued a state­ment say­ing she was track­ing de­vel­op­ments.

“This is heart­break­ing,” Whit­mer said. “Michi­gan’s Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty should be able to live and prac­tice their faith in peace.”

Tem­ple Is­rael has 12,000 mem­bers. ac­cord­ing to its web­site. It of­fers ed­u­ca­tion­al pro­grams for fam­i­lies and adults.

The web­site says the syn­a­gogue is “pas­sion­ate about help­ing Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties across the globe” and that its mis­sion is to “cre­ate a com­mu­ni­ty build­ing through the lens of Re­form Ju­daism.”

The Jew­ish Fed­er­a­tion of De­troit ad­vised all Jew­ish or­ga­ni­za­tions in the area “to go in­to lock­out pro­to­col — no­body in or out of your build­ing.” The or­ga­ni­za­tion lat­er lift­ed its ad­vi­so­ry.